1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a photonic time-division multiplexer and a photonic time-division demultiplexer which can be used in telecommunication networks which use the asynchronous time-division multiplexing technique. In this technique binary data representing telephone calls, for example, is transmitted in the form of cells each comprising a fixed number of bits. Known type time-division multiplexers and demultiplexers are implemented using electronic components. The introduction of photonic components makes it possible to envision the implementation of photonic time-division multiplexers and demultiplexers. Photonic components are faster than electronic components and cater to spectral multiplexing.
An object of the invention is to propose a photonic time-division multiplexer and demultiplexer whose design is optimized to benefit from the performance capabilities of photonic components.